The forecast comes less than two months before the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, where the fate of fossil fuels will be at the center of debates. These fuels are the main culprits for global warming.
Last month was the warmest since global records began 174 years ago. “Not only was it the warmest September on record, it is by far the warmest month in all of the agency’s measurements,” said NOAA chief science officer Sarah Kapnick. “To put it another way, September 2023 was warmer than the average July from 2001 to 2010.”
The European Copernicus observatory had already pointed out the record figures at the beginning of this month: the average temperature in the first nine months of this year was 1.40 degrees higher than in the pre-industrial era.
This brings the limit of 1.5 degrees that world leaders agreed on in the 2015 Paris agreement closer than ever. NOAA even arrives at a global temperature that is 1.44 degrees higher than in the pre-industrial era.